How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve no doubt heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re presenting and explaining complex information.

Using graphs and charts can help to break up content that has loads of text, and make statistical data more easily digestible.

You can present data with tables, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex data with figures, percentages or relationships easily, then charts and graphs allow you to present information in a meaningful and intelligent manner that can be quickly processed.

Charts and graphs help present complex information so people can more easily interpret it!

If you want to display dynamic visual content on your WordPress site like charts and graphs, this step-by-step tutorial will show you how to create beautiful and updatable graphs and charts to your WP posts that:

• Your web visitors can interact with
• Allows you to upload graph or chart data from your hard drive or an online data source
• Is responsive for mobile viewers

If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison data or trending graphs which contain information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to display your data is to create your graphs or charts using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply add your image files to your posts.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to create interactive bars and pie charts in WordPress with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

Fortunately, there is a plugin for WordPress sites that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create stunning and mobile-responsive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updatable information.

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WP dashboard (see a little further down the page), or download Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin for WordPress that lets you create, manage and embed colorful graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few mouse clicks.

The plugin uses Google Visualization API to render charts, which support cross-browser compatibility (adopting VML for older IE versions) and cross-platform portability to iOS and new Android releases, and are based on pure HTML5/SVG technology (adopting VML for old IE versions), so no additional components are required.

WordPress Visualizer also comes with a variety of charts that are optimized to address all your data visualization needs, including:

• Line chart
• Area chart
• Bar chart
• Column chart
• Pie chart
• Geo chart
• Gauge chart
• Candlestick chart
• Scatter chart

Visualizer is also flexible and customizable, allowing you to use Google Chart Tools with their default setting, or configure an extensive set of options to match your web design. Several options are available for each chart that let you fully customize their look and feel.

Additionally, charts are rendered using HTML5/SVG technology to provide cross-browser compatibility (including VML for older IE versions) and cross platform portability to iPhones, iPads and Android devices. Your web visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile web browsers without requiring the installation of additional software.

How To Install WordPress Visualizer

Inside your WordPress dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the navigation sidebar menu …

In the Add Plugins page type search for “visualizer” and click enter …

Locate the item in the search results area and click the “Install Now” button …

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

You can get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by selecting Media > Visualizer Library in your admin menu …

This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library screen …

When you first install the plugin, the library contains no charts.

Your next step is to add add charts and graphs to the plugin library.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

To add a new chart or graph to the plugin’s library, click on Add New …

A gallery displaying all of the different kinds of graphs and charts available will come up on your screen.

Select the graph or chart type you would like to create and click on the ‘Next’ button …

The graph/chart type will pop up in a new window.

The next step is to upload a CSV file containing the data you want to populate your chart or graph with …

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

• The first row contains the column headings.
• Your second row contains the series type (e.g. boolean, timeofday, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, just refer to the sample spreadsheet supplied with the plugin.

Once you have created your CSV file, select the data source (‘From Computer’ or ‘From Web’) in the ‘Upload CSV File’ section.

Upload CSV File From Computer

To upload the CSV file from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

Locate and select your file and click on ‘Open‘ …

The plugin will import the data from the CSV file and display it using the graph/chart type you have previously chosen …

Upload CSV File From The Web

To learn how to create, save and publish data to a Visualizer chart or graph using Google Spreadsheet, see the article below:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

After importing the data, check that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file containing the correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you have chosen, the plugin will display a number of customization settings and options …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you total control over your chart or graph, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers various configurable options, including:

• General Settings – Configure chart title settings, font styles, tooltip, and legend.
• Pie Settings – Create 3D pie charts, draw slices counterclockwise, set the text content displayed on the slice, create a “donut” pie chart, rotate the chart’s “start” angle and set the slice border color.
• Residue Settings – Set the ‘Visibility Threshold’ (the slice relative part, below which a slice will not show individually.), ‘Residual Slice Label’ (the label for the combination slice that holds all slices below slice visibility threshold, e.g. “Other”), and ‘Residue Slice Color’.
• Slice Settings – Customize the ‘Slice Offset’ (how far to separate a slice from the rest of the pie), and ‘Slice Color’.
• Layout & Chart Area – Configure the layout (total size of chart) including the width and height of the chart as a number of percentage, background color for the main area of the chart and the chart border width and color, and the placement and size of the chart area (where the chart itself is drawn, excluding axis and legends).

Once you’re happy with the look of your graph or chart, click Create Chart …

The new graph or chart will now be added to the Visualizer ‘Library’ …

Note that new elements are given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this allows you to easily insert charts and graphs into your content …

Graphs and charts added to the Visualizer Library can easily be accessed by their type …

After an item has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or delete it …

Plugin Usage

After you have created a chart or graph and added it to the Visualizer Library, adding it to your content is quite simple.

First, create a new post or page (or open an existing one) …

Next, place your mouse cursor where you want to insert your visual element into the content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Select the chart or graph you want to insert into your content and click on the “insert” icon …

This adds a shortcode into your content …

After you have finished adding the shortcode, click on Publish to publish (or update) your content …

After the page has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see the result …

Your post or page should display your item in the location you specified …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive visual elements for mobile browsers …

As you can see, Visualizer allows you to add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and your changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This makes adding interactive graph data in WordPress really efficient.

The developers of this plugin have created a number of step-by-step tutorials you can refer to for ways to edit, customize and use the plugin.

For tutorials on editing, copying, deleting and adding data to your charts, refer to the site below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily insert attractive and interactive charts and graphs into WordPress with WordPress Visualizer.

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